.

"Poor girl!" cried the voice of a man who suddenly appeared.

"How you made me jump, monsieur," said the grave-digger.

"Was any service held over the body you are burying?"

"No, monsieur. Monsieur le cure wasn't willing. This is the first person
buried here who didn't belong to the parish. Everybody knows everybody
else in this place. Does monsieur--Why, he's gone!"

Some days had elapsed when a man dressed in black called at the house
of Monsieur Jules Desmarets, and without asking to see him carried up to
the chamber of his wife a large porphyry vase, on which were inscribed
the words:--

INVITA LEGE
CONJUGI MOERENTI
FILIOLAE CINERES
RESTITUIT
AMICIS XII. JUVANTIBUS
MORIBUNDUS PATER.

"What a man!" cried Jules, bursting into tears.

Eight days sufficed the husband to obey all the wishes of his wife, and
to arrange his own affairs. He sold his practice to a brother of Martin
Falleix, and left Paris while the authorities were still discussing
whether it was lawful for a citizen to dispose of the body of his wife.

* * * * *

Who has not encountered on the boulevards of Paris, at the turn of a
street, or beneath the arcades of the Palais-Royal, or in any part of
the world where chance may offer him the sight, a being, man or woman,
at whose aspect a thousand confused thoughts spring into his mind?
At that sight we are suddenly interested, either by features of some
fantastic conformation which reveal an agitated life, or by a singular
effect of the whole person, produced by gestures, air, gait, clothes; or
by some deep, intense look; or by other inexpressible signs which seize
our minds suddenly and forcibly without our being able to explain even
to ourselves the cause of our emotion. The next day other thoughts and
other images have carried out of sight that passing dream. But if we
meet the same personage again, either passing at some fixed hour, like
the clerk of a mayor's office, or wandering about the public promenades,
like those individuals who seem to be a sort of furniture of the streets
of Paris, and who are always to be found in public places, at first
representations or noted restaurants,--then this being fastens himself
or herself on our memory, and remains there like the first volume of a
novel the end of which is lost. We are tempted to quest